When you grow up in a rural Canadian town with nothing much to do but sing in the church gospel choir and get bored at school, you're gonna want to rock sometimes.
Avril Lavigne wanted to do more than just lip-synch in front of a mirror with a hairbrush, though. In fact, she was dead sure she was going to do more than just fake it.
"I always knew since I was really young that I wanted to sing," the 17-year-old said. "I was just born with music in my blood, and I just wanted to do music so bad." While most of her peers in Ontario's Napanee, population 5,000, were worrying about applying for college and picking out prom dresses, high school dropout Avril was out on her own, recording her debut, Let Go (June 4), in New York and Los Angeles.
Even with her built-in teen pop appeal, Avril's self-assured album — which has already spawned a burgeoning hit with the just-be-yourself anthem "Complicated" — has more in common with the high-energy spunk of Pink than such peers as Britney and Mandy Moore. The 16-year-old music rookie from the hinterlands even ripped a page straight out of Pink's book of success when she began peddling her songs to record labels.
"When I got signed to Arista, they signed me as a singer," said Avril, who taught herself guitar at age 12 and dropped out of school in 11th grade. "They didn't know I could, or wanted to, write songs also. They began to pitch me other people's songs, but I just couldn't sing [them]. I said, 'I don't care how good these songs are, I want to write my own.' "
Arista boss Antonio "LA" Reid's gamble on letting Pink do her thing paid off, and so, seemingly, did his belief in Avril's abilities. Her album is a refreshing mix of pure pop energy and catchy rock arrangements laid over the surprisingly mature, slightly hyperactive musings of a self-confessed boy-confused teenage girl.
"It really shows all the different sides of me," said Avril, who grew up listening to her older brother's Goo Goo Dolls albums and singing Dixie Chicks covers at state fairs. "I'm a person with a ton of energy who likes to scream and party and rock out. And there are other sides of me that are real serious."
"Complicated" is one of several songs on the album that deal with the politics of poseurs and how people often change their tune when someone else comes around. "You become somebody else 'round everyone else/ You're watching your back, like you can't relax," Avril sings.
"It's like, if I'm alone with a guy, you can look into his eyes and everything is great and he's giving you all the attention you need, and then when they go off with their friends they act all, like, different," Avril said.
Her next single, "Sk8er Boi," is a fictional tale, but it slams home the just-be-yourself message even harder. She said the insanely catchy, new wavey tune was her attempt to put a short story to music.
The song is an ultimate outsider's revenge story in which the snotty, preppy girl who looks down on the baggy pants-wearing skater boy gets her comeuppance when he becomes a huge rock star. While not as autobiographical as tracks like "Anything But Ordinary" and "Things I'll Never Say," which chronicles what it's like when someone you like makes you so nervous you want to jump out of your skin, Avril said "Sk8er Boi" is still a story she's familiar with. "I know what it's like to be looked down on for being a skater."
One thing you definitely won't find Avril doing (at least not yet) is falling into the "teenie thing" trap. "I'm very careful about my image," she said of her skater gear and pixie-punk look.
"I see what's going on out there today, and I'm totally not into glamming up and looking like someone else for the camera." Avril's gotten so used to stylists trying to slather makeup on her and dress her up in "heels and skanky tops" that she brings her own clothes to photo shoots.
"I'm not a bitch or anything, but I can be a bitch," she said. "People want me to look all pretty and sexy for pictures, and it's just not my thing."
While she has no problem with the pressure of being compared to a certain other Canadian rocker with long tresses ("Alanis is totally honest in her lyrics and not afraid of what people think"), no matter what happens with her album, Avril's just happy that her dream has come true.
"It's a pretty nice job, and better than sitting in an office typing all day," said Avril, who admittedly has an attention span of zero. "And I like being a minor because you can't get into trouble. Now I just have to try and behave myself."
—Gil Kaufman
Posted by Jen on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 @ 10:30 p.m.
TV's Camden family is saving its real-life prayers for Barry Watson.
The 28-year-old dreamboat, who plays eldest son (and newly married) Matt Camden on the WB's top-rated 7th Heaven, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, a form of lymphatic cancer, his publicist confirmed Tuesday.
The rep says doctors have advised Watson that the disease, which most often occurs in young adults and people over 55, "is 95 percent curable."
"He begins treatment this week, and both he and his doctors are extremely optimistic about a full recovery," his rep said in a statement. No other details were released regarding Watson's current condition.
Watson just finished up his sixth and final season as the eldest son in TV's spiritually minded Camden clan. Monday's season finale pulled in a whopping 9 million viewers as his character finally tied the knot with his sweetheart Sarah (Sarah Danielle Madison), a girl whom he recently met.
The series, costarring Stephen Collins, Catherine Hicks, Jessica Biel and Beverley Mitchell, also remains the WB's highest-rated show, averaging 6.9 million viewers this season.
Of course, many have cited the easy-on-the-eyes Watson as one reason the series remains so popular--especially among young girls. But even before Tuesday's announcement, Watson was planning to ditch the wholesome Aaron Spelling-produced series, which he's starred in since its debut in 1996.
With his contract up this season, the Michigan-born actor turned his focus to film, recently starring in the goofball comedy Sorority Boys and scoring a cameo as himself in Ocean's Eleven. Watson, whose film credits include 1999's Teaching Mrs. Tingle, also stars in the upcoming thriller Shearer's Breakfast.
7th Heaven producers were hoping to have Watson return for a handful of episodes next season, but no word on whether that will happen.
Posted by Jen on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 @ 10:22 p.m.
Tommy Lee considered holding on to the name Methods of Mayhem for his new album, out Tuesday (May 21), even after his sidekick rapper TiLo left the fold in 2000. But rock's famous bad boy finally broke down and released Never a Dull Moment under his own name.
Lee tells allstar, "My producer, Scott Humphrey, goes, 'Here you are basically trying to start over from the ground up with Methods of Mayhem, when you've put in all this time creating a name for yourself and now you're not gonna use it. I think you're being stupid.'"
Just about everybody with a TV set knows the name Tommy Lee, thanks to circumstances that have nothing to do with why the former Motley Crue drummer entered show business 20 years ago. In addition to his current child custody battle with ex-wife Pamela Anderson, and the $160 million lawsuit filed by the parents of a 4-year-old boy who drowned in the pool at Lee's Malibu home last June, Lee's name is also -- thanks to that infamous sex tape -- rather synonomous with male endowment.
"That's really strange," he says. "Oh god, it's so fucking weird."
Recorded at Lee's Malibu home, and again featuring Lee at the mike, Never A Dull Moment ranges from the Rob Zombie-like "People So Strange" to the power ballad "Blue." "When we got back from the road in 2000, I started writing and I started hearing the music and said, 'Man, this doesn't sound like Methods anyway,'" Lee says. "So I was sitting there pondering over what Scott said and I was like, 'He's right.'"
The album also revamps the David Bowie hit "Fame." "I love Bowie and I'd heard a few people do remakes of the song, and I knew I could do a better version," Lee says. "So I started fucking with it and I was like, 'Wow this is coming out awesome.'" Lee adds that "Fame" "sort of very appropriately fits my life, don't you think?"
Lee says he doesn't know what kind of response to expect to Dull Moment, though the current issue of Entertainment Weekly gives the album a D rating. "The Methods of Mayhem album went gold and didn't even have a hit single, where with this record, my single 'Hold Me Down' is in the top 10 in all three rock charts, and I'm like, 'Holy shit!'" Lee says.
Lee says he'd consider doing another Methods album at some point. "But it'd have to be a creative free-for-all," he says, "pretty much like the first one, but with a different set of guest stars."
Lee's tour, which was originally kicking off on Friday (May 24) in Denver, is being rerouted with a possible launch date of June 21 in Anaheim, Calif. More details to come shortly.
-- Corey Levitan
Posted by Jen on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 @ 10:07 p.m.
MARATHON, Fla. (AP) - Backstreet Boy Nick Carter's raceboat broke down over the weekend, forcing his team to drop out of the Marathon Offshore Grand Prix in the Florida Keys.
The drive shaft broke on one of the 40-foot boat's two engines during the third of 14 laps around a six-mile race course Sunday. Carter races in the Super Vee class.
"I was very disappointed and so was the crew," said Carter, 22, who owns the boat but is not driving it during the 2002 American Power Boat Association (APBA) racing season. "Things like this do happen. That's racing."
The event, which attracted 76 boats Saturday and Sunday, marked the return of offshore powerboat racing for the Middle Keys community after a nine-year absence.
Posted by Jen on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 @ 10:02 p.m.
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